When Prince Aegon had said that he would tame the dragon, that he would break whatever magic it was that held the beast in thrall to the Reaver King, Garlan had thought it a boast. Fine words meant to instill confidence in listening soldiers, he had thought, an attempt to reassure men rightly frightened by all the dragon had done and all it had yet to do. He had seen his father do it before, during skirmishes with bandits and the river-pirates who sometimes dared take their chances along the Mander, and he had done it himself, during the summer-green hell of wildfire on the Blackwater.
But no. Of course it could not be so simple as that. Nothing seemed to be, not with Aegon Targaryen and his gilded dreams.
Baelor was fascinated by the Prince, of course, but he had spent time in King's Landing with Prince Rhaegar, and confessed to seeing something of the father in the son - and something of the mother, too, for even if his potential betrothal to Elia Martell had never come to anything, some small friendship had blossomed between them, and Baelor spoke of the princess well, if with great sorrow. He seemed sure that Prince Aegon truly was who he said he was, even with all the reasons to doubt.
One such reason ambled over to stand beside Garlan on the pier. Oldtown loomed tall behind them, but Duncan Strong of the Golden Company ignored it in favour of resting one hand on his sword and the other on his dagger while looking out across the water to where the dragon surely lay in wait.
"We had thought to overthrow your father," he said, without preamble. "There are a number of men who have the right to lordship here in Westeros in our company, and a number more who have friends scattered throughout the realm. We thought to seek out our fellow loyalists, overturn the Reach, and pull the Lannisters down from behind. I am glad we do not need to do so, if only for your sake. You are a good deal more capable and sensible than we had expected, based on what we had heard of your father."
"My father is a better man than rumour allows," Garlan said, not without bitterness. He loved his mother's family as well as he did all the underfoot cousins in Highgarden, but he could not abide the casual disdain they all had for his lord father. Willas had stewed in all that dislike while recovering from his accident and it had turned him all to poison for so many years, and Garlan could not help but resent his grandfather for it a little - between his mother and his goodfather and his own admittedly greedy, grasping nature, what hope had Father of creating a good name for himself? "And my brothers- my brother and sister and I work hard to make up any lack."
"We heard of your brother's passing," Strong allowed, bowing his head. "Our condolences. I understand he was a warrior of particular skill."
"He would have been unstoppable. He had no peer his own age, and few enough of any other. I would have taken his sword arm myself if it could have saved his life, all the same."
They looked seaward together another while, Garlan's chest aching to think of Loras - what would he have made of all this? Would the intrigue and splendour of Prince Aegon and his company have drawn him even a little from his grief for Renly? Likely not. Loras had never been able to give only a part of himself to anything, and to Renly he had given everything he had to give. He had not been able to understand why that had not been enough to save his King, and had been so entirely destroyed by what he thought a personal failure that Garlan, though he would never admit it aloud, not even to Willas, not even to Leo , had for some time suspected that Loras had gone willingly into death on Dragonstone.
Enough. There would be time to grieve when the war was done, whether won or lost. Someday, Garlan and Willas and Margaery would sit with Leo and Sansa and whoever eventually won Margie's heart, and they would share stories of Loras until the pain finally passed. Someday, they would be able to mention Loras' name at dinner without their mother fleeing in tears.
Today, though, there was the absurdism of the Golden Company.
"Loyalists. We at least have a history of loyalism, but you? Was your company not founded in rebellion, ser? What reason would any of you have to swear fealty to a Targaryen when you exist because your predecessors believed the Targaryen claim to the throne to be illegitimate?"
"They did, it's true," Strong says. "But what Blackfyre do you see now, my lord? I see none. I see only Aegon Targaryen, and a king who promises us what is rightly ours."
"That which you claim as being rightly yours has been out of your family's hands for generations, by any reasonable man's reckoning," Garlan said, "and it was in rebellion against the Targaryens that your lands and riches were lost. I question your… sincerity, let's call it, only because others will do the same."
"Oh, and you yourself do not doubt us, second son? Younger brother to a crippled heir, who went to war to earn a title when some might say that your father ought to have granted you his own upon his death?"
Garlan laughed. He laughed until his breath caught, laughing himself all the way to hiccups. Did this foreign-born fool, perhaps legitimate but forgotten but more likely a pretender to a name so inconsequential as to be forgotten, outside of tales of ignominy, think to scold a Tyrell of Highgarden on what was best for his family and the Reach? What nonsense. At least Prince Aegon, real or false, dragon or mummer, had the manners to recognise the limits allowed by propriety, even if he did so often ignore the rules.
"So you think me a dissatisfied Daemon, angry that my father sees the worth in his Daeron? Nay, ser. My brother is the best of men, and the Reach will be the better for his taking Highgarden. Had it not been for an accident of fate, he would have been standing here in my place, and no one would think Garlan Greensick so Gallant as circumstance has made him, I promise you."
Strong looked at him, thoughtful now.
"You think us brutes, then," he said. "I suppose we must seem such, between Bittersteel and Maelys as the best known of our legends, and now our position as conquerors of this realm you've all let fracture so badly. I did not mean to disparage your brother so, not when the Prince speaks so well of him and his lady, but you must understand how you Tyrells appear to us."
"Turncloaks," Garlan hazarded, because that was what everyone thought of them. "Opportunists and cowards. I have heard all of it, although never to my face. That is why I have done you the respect of being forthright."
"I see now. You are not at all like your father, my lord. I had the honour of meeting him on my way here from the Stormlands, and you and he… Well, you have his look, but you are your own man. He would never have had the balls to speak such accusations aloud."
"I do not accuse," Garlan said firmly. "Only question. I wonder how the Prince will explain his motley assemblage of bannermen when the time comes to forge peace. Martells and Tyrells, the Golden Company and half the Stormlands - who knows who else will come to his side, in the coming weeks and months? But it will be strange, I think, no matter how far his rule spreads, because of its foundation. That is all."
Willas was better at this politicking and double-speaking, but Garlan could hold his own. Willas had Grandmother's sharp eye for people, and he had spent years with Baelor's smile flashing bright and double-edged as a sword at his shoulder, but the High Tower was easily managed because the Hightowers, behind closed doors, were every one as loud as the Old Man. Highgarden was such a morass of cousins and hangers-on, all of them Tyrells, which meant all of them cunning enough to have plans and motivations, that navigating it peacefully was an education in minding your words without equal. Between that and smoothing the waters in Father's always-churning wake, Garlan knew how to speak and when to speak, at least.
"You are not wrong," Strong admitted. "You're not! But what matter gossip in the face of victorious conquest?"
"A great matter if tongues wag hard enough to turn the wind, I suppose. But if the Prince is sincere in his plan to tame the dragon, and if he is successful, well, nothing anyone might say of him will matter."
"Just so-!"
"Unless, of course, the Mother of Dragons turns her gaze at last to Westeros. What say the Golden Company of the Unsullied, ser?"
"There are rumours of greyscale in the Stormlands," Father said, "and we have been attempting to undermine them so as to stay a panicked horde of Stormlanders attempting to flee south-west."
"So they are true, then," Willas said. "How bad is it?"
Greyscale! A monstrous sickness indeed. Willas had never seen a survivor, although he had heard of Stannis Baratheon's little daughter and her scarred face. Renly and Loras used to sneer about the child, mocking her scaled cheek, and it had been one more reason to be angry with Loras - Willas had felt nothing but sympathy for the girl, who at seven and eight had already been talked about as unmarriageable because of a sickness she had overcome as a babe.
He wondered where that child was now. Her father had fled after his defeat on the Blackwater and they said that his whole court, Queen and all, had gone with him - but what had become of the girl? What would Prince Aegon do with the Usurper's last heirs, brother and niece, if he laid hands on them?
"We cannot simply abandon the sick," Mother said, busy with her loom on the other side of the room. "How far has it spread, do we know? I will write to my father, have him set the Citadel to work - it will distract them from griping about the dragons, as though they alone have cause to fear."
"Your father, my love, will ignore the report because it comes from me," Father said, and Willas squirmed in his chair. For so long, he had stewed in the bile that Mother's family reserved solely for Father, adding his own bitterness to the pot, and he felt very stupid indeed for it now. "No, I have already sent word to the maesters, I sent the raven at the same time I sent the one telling you all of my return home. They are already marshalling their knowledge, such as it is, and I am told that the Essosi among the Prince's men are sharing what cures and preventatives they have with the commons as they pass, so there is not much more we can do for now."
"We cannot allow people to come into the Reach if they might be carrying the sickness," Willas said. "Not by the roads, at least - there is a way to test for it, isn't there? We could quarantine people for a week, perhaps, at the border?"
"It would not take much," the Gross agreed, hands folded atop his massive belly. "A small camp on each of the roads - I do not doubt that the sandmen will do the same."
"We sandmen," Lady Nym said, with Oberyn's viper's eyes flashing fire-bright beneath a smooth, calm brow, "will have an easier time of closing our roads than you farmers. The Boneway is not idly named, fat man, and to get to the Prince's Pass they must pass through the Reach, I think. We are quite safe. Worry for yourself, and my uncle will worry for us."
Every mention Nym made of Prince Doran made Willas more eager to meet him - Oberyn had always spoken of his brother with such pride and admiration, such trust, that Willas had wanted to meet him based just on his friend's letters, but there was a hint of something harder in Nym's threadbare praise of her uncle that added something truly interesting to the portrait of the Prince of Dorne in Willas' mind's eye. Dorne had been quieter than anyone had expected in the wake of Princess Elia's murder, which had caused enough surprise that Willas remembered it, young as he had been at the time, and now, looking back, he wondered what Prince Doran's plan had been at that time. Had the Martells known all along of Prince Aegon's survival? Or had they supported the Queen in Essos and her now-dead brother, thinking to enable a restoration?
That seemed likely, with the dead Martell prince in Slaver's Bay, but Willas knew that he would never find the truth of it. No matter his friendship with Oberyn, no matter the alliance they had entered into for the sake of overthrowing the Lannisters, he was a Tyrell, and the Martells would never trust him even halfway.
"Regardless," he said, holding up a hand to forestall whatever nonsense Garth was preparing to spew, "Mother is right. There must be some help we can offer, even it is only to expedite the maesters' efforts."
"We have other concerns," Father said, tossing a balled-up parchment at Garth, bouncing it off his eye and cutting him off at the pass. "The rumours of the Dragon Queen's army landing in the Stormlands are true, too. The Swanns have welcomed them at Stonehelm, and her people are taking the Slayne to avoid the Rainwood. We will see what Greybeard Grandison does when they reach Grandview, but I think we can assume that he will welcome them, in a dragon's shadow."
"My cousin went to meet her," Nym said quietly, "although whether she intends on offering friendship or demanding her brother's bones, I know not. Arianne is less predictable than any of us realised, and far bolder, too."
Arianne had simpered and sighed enough to undermine any appearance of boldness while they were all at Storm's End, but Willas had met her before, and been alarmed and admiring in equal measure. Her raw charm would serve her well in the Dragon Queen's supposedly eclectic court, he was sure. Her raw intelligence would serve her even better.
"There are worse things than boldness," Mother said, so quietly that Willas did not think anyone else had heard until Father's face fell for just a moment. Just the space between one breath and the next. Willas wished there was something he could say, some comfort he could offer, but there was nothing - short of finding a miracle and returning Loras to them, this was a grief that would hang on their shoulders until their own final days.
"You might expect the Queen to venture a little further than her people," Lannister said, lounging like a drunk despite being sober as a septon. His style was admirable, even if his manners were not. "Dragons are faster than you realise, my lords, and Queen Daenerys wishes very much to see her realm - she is a patient woman, but a curious one."
"What Lord Lannister means," Ser Barristan sighed, "is that the messengers who brought us confirmation of Her Grace's arrival also brought us some news of her plans. She is coming to Highgarden, my lords. Based on how long it must have taken the message to reach us, she should be here any day now."
Ser Barristan had the good sense to look embarrassed. Dragons! In Highgarden! And a conquering queen coming to call at the House who had thrown the most support behind her primary rival? Some warning!
Willas heaved himself upright on one crutch, startling everyone away from the table. Father passed him his other crutch without a word, nodding as he passed, and Mother rose from her loom just long enough to kiss his cheek. They and the Gross would find out the finer detail of what the Dragon Queen expected of vassals, but Willas would go to Margaery and Leonette and ask their help in arranging comforts and delights for a young woman unused to the best of Westerosi hospitality. Leo's help had been impossible to calculate in Sansa's first days at Highgarden, and they would never have gotten her down the roseroad whole without Margaery's gentle coaxing in King's Landing. If they could offer such comfort and succor to Sansa, who had been without hope of escape, never mind victory, then surely they could amuse Daenerys Targaryen for a day or two, couldn't they?
He let himself into Leonette's solar, and would have called out had all the curtains not been drawn. There was not even a lantern lit, which was so unlike Leo, who was always busy at something and hated any weather but sunshine, that Willas' stomach dropped. Was she ill again? Was it the babe, or something else? Was Margaery with her - should Willas go to her?
"Oh! My lord!"
Leo's maid, Tema or Tyma, he could never remember which, was a square-shouldered woman of about Willas' own age, and she had a bundle of bedlinens under her arm when she came out of Leo's bedchamber. She was whispering, and closed the door behind her with such excruciating care that Willas cringed with her at the click of the latch.
"My lady's been up sick all night," she said, and it was only then that Willas noticed the deep circles under her own eyes. "I've changed her and the bed, and she's resting now, but I've not been able to get anything more than sweet tea and a little mashed peach into her. Will you try, my lord? She might listen to you, given Lord Garlan's not here to coax her along."
Willas had neither Garlan's easy way nor a share of his and Leo's love, but he would try all the same to care for Leonette - for Garlan's sake, but for Leo's, too, and for the child she carried.
"Alright," he said. "Is there food for her within, or need I send for something?"
"I'll fetch something more up-"
"You'll leave those sheets where they need to be, and then you'll find your bed," Willas said firmly. "You look near as tired as she must be - go, rest. I'll have something sent up if she can eat whatever you have prepared for her and wants more. Go on, get some sleep. Just be back in time to help her dress for dinner, yes?"
"Of course, my lord! I- thank you, my lord."
Toma. That was her name. Willas only remembered it when she scurried away down the backstairs.
Leo, when he let himself into her bedchamber, was lying on her side with her legs drawn up, snuffling in palpable misery. She looked so indescribably sad that Willas ignored the tray of food - peaches featured heavily, and apples - and climbed as gracefully as he could onto the bed behind her.
"You saw his letter, then."
She sniffed at him, and managed to make it sound resentful.
"He's as safe as he possibly could be, given the circumstances," Willas said. "It's no comfort at all, but it's the best comfort we have."
"I dream that our child will never meet its father," Leo said, her voice thin and hoarse. "I dream, every night, that I will have to name my son in memory of his father."
Willas had dreamt it, too, a nephew with Leo's bright eyes but Gargoyle's round cheeks, holding Leonette's hand but without a papa to chase him through the gardens. Nightmares were common visitors at Highgarden, but never about Garlan - Garlan was too sensible, too good to ever put himself in such dire danger that they needed to worry about him. They had all worried about Loras, especially after he told them of the trick he played on the Mountain, and even more again after Renly's death. They had all worried about Margie in King's Landing, especially once the truth of the Lannister bastard had come to light. But Garlan? Generous, kind, gallant Garlan? No. No, there had never been reason to worry for him. Not until the dragons came.
What comfort was there to offer to Leonette? Any assurances Willas might offer would mean nothing at all so long as Euron Greyjoy and his stolen dragon shadowed Oldtown. Distraction, though. Distraction he could do. A brief interlude of distraction to take Leonette out of her preemptive grief was within his power.
"Well, that's very sad," he said, in his most especially obnoxious voice, modelled on Loras, "but I need you to get up and eat, because I have a job for you."
"Sometimes, Willas Tyrell, I could strangle you-"
"We're to have a royal visit, lazybones," he said, rolling away and off the bed when she swung back blindly with a white-knuckled fist. "Any day now, according to the Imp - get up, get dressed, and force something down your gullet so you're fit to help with preparations."
"You!"
"I'm serious, Leonette," he said, shifting until he'd arranged his crutches properly. "I'll send for Margaery, she can help you dress, and then I'll sit with you while you eat. Then you're going to get up and help Marg and I prepare to welcome the Mother of Dragons to Highgarden."
Her eyes, usually so bright, were heavy and red. Willas could not remember ever seeing Leo cry other than from laughter in all the many years he had known her, and he wished so desperately that he could draw forth a smile. He could not help but think of Garlan dancing with Sansa while he could not, on their so long ago wedding day, just for the sake of alleviating her sorrow.
"There are peach slices and honey here for you, and some of that wretched cold tea you like," he said gently, handing her the robe her maid had left on the end of the bed. "If you finish that, I'll send for some porridge with that apple slurry you had the cooks make, with the ginger."
"You're a terrible nurse," she scolded him, but she took the robe and slid out from under the covers, belting it above the full-moon swell of her belly. "But I do not trust you to do enough and I don't trust Margaery not to do too much, so I will help. You need someone of reasonable taste, not an ascetic like you or a Tyrell like Margie."
"There were so many insults in there, Leo, and not one of them landed."
He threw open the curtains while she picked at her breakfast, and by the time he had hobbled his way around the whole of her chamber and opened the windows, the platter of peaches was cleared, and most of the tea was gone.
"I sent your girl to bed," he said, "so I'll find someone to come and help you dress, alright? And then we'll find Margie and Mother and we'll lock Grandmother away somewhere so she can't try and take over."
Leonette caught the hem of his doublet as he passed, and had the gall to look embarrassed. As though she could ever have cause for embarrassment in front of Willas - as if he would acknowledge it even if she did manage to make a fool of herself!
"I'm so worried about him, Willas," she said, so very softly. "I don't know how I would survive if he does not."
"I do," he said, turning so he could lay his hand on her shoulder. "With my help. Mine and Mother's and everyone else's. We wouldn't let you go so easily as that, Leo, lest Gargoyle haunt us."
"As though you don't feel the same about Sansa," she said, this time a little wry. "Sobbing into your pillow every night like a lovesick boy-"
"How about," he said loudly, returning to the Loras-voice and finally winning himself a smile, "we agree not to mourn and mope, and if we must, we sit together and be miserable once everything else is done for the day. Agreed?"
Her eyes were still red and her smile was small, but it was a smile all the same. It would do for now.
Sansa had never been in White Harbour before, and under a blanket of snow with the sharp, fresh salt of the Bite in the air, it was nothing like the heat and stink of King's Landing. If anything, clean and bright and ringing with bells and voices as it was, it was closer to Oldtown, and she had loved Oldtown. From here, though, she could see down into the harbour, where there were ships - damaged, with broken masts - flying crimson banners.
That the masts were broken meant that the Lannisters who had come here had been defeated. That the banners had flown at all meant that there were Lannisters in the city. Even knowing that they were either dead or in chains, the very idea of being near them, of having faces like Joffrey's within view, eyes like Joffrey's watching her-
She found herself drawing Whisper to a halt on the final rise above the city gates, Blossom yipping about in the muck at her feet. Her breath felt short and painful right in the top of her chest, stinging cold as she gulped and it hit the back of her throat.
"Sweetling? Are you well?"
Humfrey's face, so like Willas', seemed alien in the frame of his soft blonde curls. He was handsome enough that with that hair that, while Sansa's mind was tangled up in the memory of Joffrey's viciousness, she jerked away from him. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She knew Humfrey would never hurt her as Joffrey had, and indeed that he would kill anyone who tried! But she couldn't meet his eyes, couldn't nudge Whisper down the road, couldn't calm Blossom when she started to whine in distress. Couldn't do anything. Couldn't stop anything.
"Sansa," Arya said, reaching up and over from her own saddle to take Sansa's face by the chin, drawing her around and forcing her to meet her steady grey gaze. Arya had Father's eyes, shape and colour and steely firmness, and Sansa managed to catch her breath while Arya watched. "Better?"
"I'm sorry," Sansa said, glad that her face was already scalded by the wind so no one would notice her blushes. "I'm so sorry, Arya, I'm sorry-"
"Not here," Arya said. "Save all of that until we're home. I need you at your best for this. We need to do everything we can to get Rickon away from all these strangers, Sansa. We need the pack back together."
Sansa nodded, not quite trusting her voice, and Arya returned it.
She is my sister, Sansa reminded herself. She might have made peace with the creature, and the creature's men don't seem to worry her, and our bannermen might love her just as much as they dislike me, but she is my sister before any of that. I must not forget that.
"Better?" Humfrey asked, clicking his tongue until Blossom quieted. Now that the terror had passed, she could see once more that his hair was not at all like the yellow-blonde of the Lannisters, and his eyes were a bright, clear blue. There was nothing in Humfrey's face that recalled Joffrey, not now that she was calm once again.
Well, calm. Sansa did not think she would be calm again until she had Willas within arm's reach.
"As good as I can be, until we're sure that this is Rickon," she said, knowing that Humfrey did not believe her smile for a moment. "Let's go ahead, then, before I lose my nerve again. Go on, Humfrey, I promise I'm well again."
They had all agreed that Humfrey would lead their party in, just in case of danger on the city gates - his accent would mark him as an outsider, and from a distance, he might pass for a Lannister if need be. If there were friends on the gate, well, they would have heard Willas' cousin's accent long enough to recognise Humfrey for a Reacher, at least, and that would give them pause long enough that he might plead their case. He was their best speaker, either way, and their best swordsman too, so even the Brotherhood had agreed to give him the lead.
"Is it the banners or the city?" Lady Mormont asked, more subdued than usual as she drew her horse in alongside Whisper. She kept her eyes determinedly forward, but there was something low and sad in the set of her mouth. "It's the brine for me. We were at Hag's Mire when last I saw my Dacey - witness to that will of your brother's, the one you have tucked under your clothes."
Sansa was careful not to react. She thought that perhaps Lady Mormont did not mind that she had taken the will, but who knew how Master Glover might react?
"It's been cold enough that the air tastes different," Lady Mormont said, "but it's there, and when I close my eyes, I see her die a hundred different ways. So is it the banners, or is it the city?"
"Both," Sansa said. "It's both. Red banners and the bells, and fair hair."
"The bastard boy was cruel indeed to you, wasn't he?"
"He would have killed me, had my husband's family not killed him first."
That was true, she knew. Marrying her to Willas had protected her in the short term, but Joffrey had considered her his to possess, his to harm. The road from King's Landing to Highgarden would never have been long enough to stop him, once he had grown bored of Margaery for want of a chance to hurt her.
Or perhaps he would have raised a hand to Margaery, and Loras would have emulated the Kingslayer. Sansa had not known the Knight of Flowers so well as she did Garlan, but she knew that none of Mace Tyrell's sons would suffer their sister to come to harm. Even when Willas had been angry and unkind to her, Sansa had been sick with jealousy over how much he wanted to protect Margaery.
Margaery, Sansa knew, would never have been abandoned to enemy hands.
"You say that as though you're sure they had a hand in it."
"They did," Sansa said. "My husband never lies to me, even when it would be a kindness. He told me of their plan. It ensured that my goodsister is technically Queen of the Seven Kingdoms without ever having to allow Joffrey Baratheon to lay a hand on her, and all it cost Lord Mace was a son."
Becoming King in the North had cost Robb everything - Father, Mother, Bran and Rickon, Arya and Sansa. By the end, even Sansa had been beyond his reach. Why would anyone want a crown, if this was the price?
"I can only assume that my brother disinherited me," Sansa said. "You must have been witness to his will, if he entrusted it to you, so you will know. It was the sensible thing to do, given the apparent loyalties of my husband's family. I suppose he might have done so even if he knew that we had allied with the Targaryens - I cannot blame him, and I am not angry or bitter. I suspect you and Master Glover expected my husband to want Winterfell and the North, but that is not his way and it is not mine, either. I am not the stupid little girl I was when I left Winterfell, Lady Mormont, and while I will do my duty by my brothers and sister, I will return once more to Highgarden without guilt. I gave up my right to Winterfell a long time ago, but I will do all I can to ensure that it remains with my family. I offer you that much, at least."
Lady Mormont still kept her gaze toward the city, but she did not seem quite so stern now.
"I said before that you have a great deal of your mother in you," she said, "but there's something of the Starks in you too, isn't there?"
"Contrary to what you and Master Glover think, my lady, I am my father's daughter. I am a Stark. I am of the North as much as any of you are, no matter how little place is left for me here."
White Harbour smelled of snow and the sea, and Arya was sure there was no finer city in Westeros. She had listened as patiently as she could to Sansa's tales of Oldtown, and ignored as best she could Humfrey Hightower's, but White Harbour was in the North. That meant it had something even Oldtown and especially King's Landing could never have, something good and strong and old , not in the buildings and walls but in the land itself.
She wondered if it felt close to home for Sansa. So far as Arya was concerned, it was the closest she had felt to herself in years - but Arya had always loved the North in a way Sansa had not. Sansa had always looked south for her future, and now, with her hair bound in Reacher-style braids, wearing a jerkin of soft leather in pale Hightower white under a dark green woolen doublet sewn about the collar with golden roses, it was in the south that her future lay. At least the promise of returning to her sickly husband would keep Sansa sweet and steady while they took Winterfell back from the turncloaks and bastards who'd stolen it.
"You must be glad of it," Alla said, her eyes bright and watering between hood and scarf. She had grown a little used to the cold, but the wind seemed beyond her - to hear her tell it, the breezes that blew across the Mander to Highgarden were always a balm, and the Honeyholt's air was as sweet as its name. "To be here, where you can use your name again. I know that Lady Sansa felt it - Margaery said that when they were in King's Landing, the name of Stark was used as a curse, almost."
"My sister is a Tyrell now," Arya said, surprised at the way it stung to say it aloud. "She is free of that curse."
"No woman marries into House Tyrell and becomes a Tyrell," Alla said, full of scorn. "Not the way you say your lady mother became a Stark, say. Lady Olenna might act as though we are all hers to command, but she's a mean old fool. There are not so few of us roses that we must steal away the blooms of other Houses - Lady Sansa will remain a Stark until she goes to the gods, for all that her children will bear our name and like as not have our hair."
"She dresses-"
"Because we dressed her," Alla pointed out reasonably, and Arya knew she was smiling under her scarf. She had learned the shape of Alla's smile in her eyes for want of being able to see her mouth. "If anyone looked at you, they would see a Reacher. Everything you are wearing was made in Highgarden. The only thing you carry of the North is your sword, my lady - Lady Sansa doesn't have even that much."
"You sound sorry for her."
"I am," Alla said. "I saw her, in King's Landing. I was in Margaery's household, and we all saw her - we were glad of her marriage to Cousin Willas for his sake, because we've all been sorry that he's been sad so long, but for her sake as well. None of us wanted to see her trapped there a moment longer than we had to. I've told you already how she was when she came to us, haven't I?"
She had, as had Sansa's husband, and her goodbrother and his wife. The Tyrells seemed to love Sansa well, and Arya could not begrudge her that - she only wished it did not have to be so far away.
The boy who'd come to guide them in, who'd given Edwyle as his name, rode at the fore of their party with Ser Humfrey. He had taken them along the broad street that led from gate to square, and then another street from square to castle, and Arya wished she had some badge or token to prove herself a Stark. Sansa would have the right words to convince people, she always did, but Arya had only the hope that the Lords Manderly would recognise her for the resemblance she bore to her lord father. It did not feel enough.
"Would you prefer to speak?" Sansa asked, her hardy little dog yapping between them as she darted around the horses' feet. "You've had better luck with Northerners than I, since we started this journey."
"You're better at this than me," Arya said, because it was true. Even when they were small, Sansa had known how to flatter and please, while Arya's knack for people was less refined, less political. "And you're the oldest - if this is Rickon, then you'll be his regent."
"Even though I'm not of age either," Sansa sighed, tugging off her mittens - it was strange to see her confident enough in the saddle to release the reins, comfortable controlling her beautiful horse with just her thighs, but Arya supposed her husband was to thank for that. According to Alla, he was quite famous for the quality of his stables. "Very well. Do you think… No, it's foolish."
"What is? What's foolish?"
"I was wondering whether or not Rickon would recognise us, but that is stupid of me. He was so little when we left, and it has been such a long time that of course he won't remember us. I should not have said anything."
"I think he might," Arya said. "We're his family. His pack. I think he might remember us."
She had worried the same thing, of course, worried that even if this boy the Manderlys had truly was Rickon, that he would neither remember them nor remember who he truly was - if it truly was Rickon, where had he been all this time? Nowhere good. Nowhere that would teach him the importance of being the Stark in Winterfell.
"I hope he remembers us," Sansa said. "I don't see how he could remember Father, but perhaps he remembers Mother."
Arya did not follow Sansa's backward glance, knowing that Lady Stoneheart was not there. She and the Brotherhood had remained outside the city walls, which was probably for the better. If Rickon did remember Mother, it would be cruel to subject him to her as she was now.
Arya had met one of the Lords Manderly at some point, she remembered, a vast man with a rumbling laugh like thunder - was that Lord Manderly who was probably dead, or Lord Manderly his heir, or Lord Manderly his second son? She did not know. She had heard that the second son was dead, too, dead at the Twins, and she was sure that he would not have remembered even if it was him that she had met.
The guards on the castle doors were garbed in Manderly turquoise, shimmering bright with silver thread in the dimming light. As Arya watched, a girl slipped out the doors while they arrayed themselves at the foot of the steps leading up to the doors, their horses snorting and pawing at the ground as they sensed their riders' worry.
Sansa unwound the scarf around her face and lowered her hood before dismounting, shaking her hair from under her cloak. With her hair braided away from her face and loose down her back, she looked even more like Mother than usual - distractingly so. Arya did not realise that she was staring until Alla nudged her, and she hoped that Sansa had not noticed.
The girl at the doors wore her hair in two long braids, drawn forward over her shoulders, over her cloak. She looked not much taller than Arya, who remained frustratingly small when compared with Sansa's sudden spurt of growth, and the hood of her cloak was lined with silvery-grey fur that showed up the green of her hair twice as bright.
"Welcome to White Harbour! Welcome to the New Castle! Come, I am Wylla, granddaughter of Lord Wyman, and I bid you welcome - come, we have bread and salt, and once you've suffered through that we have mead and cider to warm you and stew to fill your bellies. Come!"
Sansa's curtsy was immaculate, graceful as dancing even without skirts, and this Wylla Manderly seemed taken aback by it.
"We gladly accept your welcome, Lady Wylla," she said. "I am Sansa, and this my sister, Arya-"
Arya bowed her head but offered no further honour. She would wait and see how the Manderlys reacted to Sansa, whether they treated her as much a traitor as Lady Maege and Master Glover did or if they had some sense, before offering them her friendship.
"- and my uncle by marriage, Ser Humfrey of House Hightower. Also with us…"
Sansa ran through an exhaustive list of names, her voice high and clear even through the wind that rattled down the broad street behind them. Arya moved up to stand alongside her, holding Sansa's hand as best as possible through their thick mittens. Had she not done so, had Sansa's grip not tightened like thumbscrews around Arya's fingers, she would never have guessed how nervous Sansa was.
"I would be grateful if you could ensure that our companions are fed and watered, and quartered, too, as soon as possible," Sansa said, once she had finished her introductions. "But my sister and I are eager to see the boy you say is our brother, and we would rather see him before we eat."
"Of course, my lady," Wylla Manderly said, gesturing for them to follow her back in through the doors. "He is with my father, in the Merman's Court - if you will come with me, I will bring you to him directly. Cousin Marlon, who is our commander, will see to your companions. Please, ladies, with me, if you will."
Arya kept hold of Sansa's hand, and did not comment when Hightower fell in behind them as they climbed the stairs. Master Glover came too, and Arya wondered why he was so blatant about keeping his hand on his sword - Hightower was doubtless ready to draw his fancy blade at the slightest provocation, but he had the sense not to insult the Manderlys by letting everyone know that. Why was Master Glover so anxious? What about the New Castle had him so very much on edge?
"I hope," Sansa said, the clarity of her voice gone and replaced instead with a thin quaver, "that he remembers who he is. Even if he does not remember who we are, we can restore him if he remembers himself."
What would they do if this boy wasn't Rickon? Red hair like his and Sansa's - and Robb's, and Bran's, and Mother's - was rare in the North, but not so rare as to be impossible to find. There were plenty of boys Rickon's age, and even the report Tyrell's cousin had given of a direwolf could be false. What Arya had seen of the hunting hounds of Highgarden, bred by her goodbrother, had very little to do with their counterparts in the North. The Reacher dogs were sleek, pretty animals, just like Sansa's little Blossom, hardy and clever but made for meadow and wood. Northern hunting dogs were lean, long-legged beasts with teeth like short swords and tempers like bad weather. It would be easy for a Reacher to see a Northern hound and make a direwolf of it.
"I understand your concerns," Lady Wylla said quietly, without any of the condescending gentleness Arya had come to expect of the adults who surrounded them. "But my lord grandfather sent King Stannis' Onion Knight to search out little Lord Rickon on Skagos, and the journey was so harrowing as to make me think that the gods would have allowed their survival only if the boy he found there was truly Lord Stark."
Sansa's grip went painful again as they moved through another set of doors, and another, and then they were in a vast room, all around with mermen and sea monsters and strange, interlocking wood panels on the walls. Atop a chair that seemed nearly a throne sat a large, fat man, flanked on one side by a sharp-eyed woman who was surely his lady wife and on the other by a woman who, although more Sansa's height than Arya's, was surely Lady Wylla's sister.
"You are welcome indeed to the New Castle, my ladies," the man called, heaving himself to his feet. "I am Lord Wylis Manderly. You have met my daughter, Wylla - please meet my wife, Leona, and my heir, Wynafryd. White Harbour is yours."
"I am Sansa, and this my sister, Arya of House Stark," Sansa said, and something about the way she said it felt strange to Arya's ear. "I promise you that we will talk soon, my lord, but we must ask that you bring our brother to us. We must confirm that he is who you think he is before we make any further plans. I hope you can understand."
Her voice was bell-clear again, her eyes star-bright and liquid with pleading. Sansa had always been good at getting her way, but this was something else - where had she learned this? In King's Landing, with the Lannister bastard? Or was her marriage not so happy as she and all the Tyrells insisted, that she had learned this skill for falsehood in Highgarden? Either way, it would serve them well now. Lord Manderly's face softened before the terrible sadness Sansa presented to him, and he beckoned to someone in the shadows away to the left.
"Thank the gods," Master Glover said, and Arya realised that she knew the man coming forth from the shadows - she had seen him at Harrenhall, so long ago, and thought him a fine lord at the time. Now, knowing Master Glover, she could see the resemblance between the brothers Glover, and the hope she had ignored all these weeks of travel began to stir in her belly. Behind Robett Glover was a tall, hard-faced woman wearing heavy pelts and rough-tanned leathers, who stared fiercely at Arya but hard at Sansa.
Behind her, with eyes as star-bright as Sansa's, with hair exactly the same dark-red as Robb's had been when last she had seen him, was Bran.
But it could not be Bran, because Bran was dead and had been crippled before his death besides, which meant-
"Rickon," Sansa said, dropping Arya's hand to tear at her mittens, shoving them into Hightower's hands. "Rickon? Do you remember us?"
"Osha says that you're my sisters," he said, and Arya shoved her mittens at Hightower, too, because he even sounded like Bran, this boy who was Rickon the baby. Rickon had never sounded so steady and grown-up, but this had to be him. "But you look like Mother."
Sansa dropped to her knees before him, and crouched there with her hands stretched out as if to cup his round little face, she did look like Mother, so much that Arya's heart was sore. It was like watching Mother and Bran, after Bran had been caught climbing again.
"I do," Sansa agreed, "but so do you. You remember her, Rickon? Do you remember Father, too?"
He looked now to Arya, standing at Sansa's shoulder. His face was serious in a way Bran's had never been, brows drawn down like Jon's, or Father's.
"You look like Father," he said. "I think. So you are Arya."
"I am," Arya agreed. "And you are Rickon, our baby brother."
He leaned all the way forward and thumped Arya hard in the arm, crying "I'm not a baby!" She did not think that he really minded, though, because his face was pink and he was smiling almost as wide as she was.
When Sansa started to laugh, it took Arya a moment to place the sound - none of them had laughed in such a long time, after all.
"Leo's resting," Margaery said, tugging her cloak tighter around herself as the breeze picked up. "But I think we should walk regardless - it is suffocating inside, is it not?"
"I would offer you my arm," Willas said, "but I don't know that I trust myself quite yet."
Maester Lomys had bullied him until he conceded to trying a false leg, and it was already agonising - one full day, and already he had blisters where the remnant of his thigh sat into the cradle, and the buckles and straps were as uncomfortable as ever his brace had been. It did mean he could try one crutch instead of two, though, and would hopefully be able to return to using just his cane. For now, though, with the drizzle that had scattered across the gardens all morning, he would not risk Margaery - if he fell, he would bring her down with him.
They got as far as the peach orchards before Margaery spoke. Willas had grown to like Margaery's surprising ability to be quiet very much since it had been just the two of them left in Highgarden of the four, and felt the now-familiar twinge of guilt for how easily he had dismissed her for so long.
"I wish Lannister were not here," she said, shaking her head. "I wish- is it my fault, Willas? That he had to flee as he did, that Prince Oberyn is dead? Joffrey I will never mourn, but death seems to follow after me. Renly, Joffrey, Prince Oberyn, Loras - all because of me."
Had she been holding this in all this time? Had she spoken of this to Mother, to Grandmother, even to Leo?
"Nothing that has happened has been your fault, little rose," he said, risking his balance to reach over and lay his hand on her shoulder. She let him draw her close, and wrapped her arms tight around him the same way she used when she was little and he was home, visiting from Oldtown, and she did not want him to leave. "Do you hear me? You did not wish to marry Renly, or Joffrey Baratheon. You did not summon whatever demon it was that killed Renly, and you did not wield the poison that killed Joffrey Baratheon, either - as for Oberyn, well! I don't think the gods themselves could have stopped him, if he had taken it into his head to fight that fight. The Mountain killed his sister, remember. No, Margie, no, you did not kill him. And as for Loras, I think he will haunt me if I allow you to blame yourself even a little for his passing."
"He would never have joined the Kingsguard if not for me," Margaery said, her voice thin and watery. "And if he had not joined the Kingsguard-"
"Loras," Willas said, as gently as he could, "would not have wanted to live long in a world without Renly."
Margaery sniffed deeply, nodding against his chest, and they fell back into quiet. It was very easy to be quiet with Margaery.
"I think the rain is coming back," Willas said. "Was that thunder?"
"Hmm," Margaery agreed. "I think- there it is again! But that is far too close given how little cloud there is-"
The thunder clapped a third time, its shadow falling across the gardens. Willas, like most bookish boys, had clamoured for everything he could find about dragons when the maesters let him loose in the libraries of the High Tower and Highgarden, but no book could have prepared him for this. The thing above them could have blocked the noonday sun, and as it was- where would it land? Where within the walls aside from the grand lawn between gate and keep-
The storm above them screamed as it spiralled down toward that very lawn, and the silver-blonde hair of the woman sitting in the bend of its neck was like a blazon against its black, black scales.
Willas and Margaery turned and ran - well, hobbled - as fast as they could toward the main doors, fast enough that Willas' whole ribcage was aching by the time they stopped.
The woman, with her silver-blonde hair and her brilliant lavender eyes, with her red silks and black leathers, was tiny, and younger than Willas had expected. Bells jingled in the short braid that hung down her neck, and she carried no weapons at all - what need would she have of weapons, when she had a dragon?
"Your Grace," Willas said, bowing as low as he could without losing his balance. Margaery dropped all the way to the ground, curtsying with her usual grace even as her always-pink cheeks went pale with terror. "Forgive us, we did not expect you yet - I am Willas of House Tyrell, and this is my sister, the Lady Margaery. You are most welcome to Highgarden."
Her smile was stunning, almost dazzling enough to disguise the guarded look in those striking eyes, but she gestured for them to stand all the same.
"I am glad to be here," Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, said. "Highgarden is even more beautiful than I was told."